


The Alien Offspring Analysis

by nice_girls_play



Category: Big Bang Theory
Genre: Kid Fic, M/M, Parents & Children, Same-Sex Marriage
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-01
Updated: 2013-01-29
Packaged: 2017-11-08 23:53:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/448936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nice_girls_play/pseuds/nice_girls_play
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of drabbles about the Wolowitz-Koothrappali clan. For Howard and Raj, family life is nothing anyone wanted for them and nothing they could have predicted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Thanksgiving Inequality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Dads, we took a vote..."

i. 

"Dads, we took a vote. And none of us wants to eat Bubbie's turbriskefil at Thanksgiving this year. Or next year. Or any year." 

Jonah Hawking Wolowitz's shoulders were square and his voice was perfectly steady. He was twelve now. In six months, he'd be bar mitzvahed and officially declared a man by his rabbi and his parents. Currently though, he was still a boy and the boy was giving his father a headache. 

Howard ran a hand over his face, a sigh trapped deep in his chest. 

"You took a vote?" 

"Yes."

"All of you."

"Yes."

"Including Tav."

Tavish Tolkien Wolowitz was currently slumped over in Raj's arms, alternately sucking his teething ring and drooling on his other daddy's paiseley shirt sleeve.

"We made a color-coded drawing and instructed him to touch his answer. He touched the red circle for 'no.'"

"Remind me to kill Sheldon," he whispered over his shoulder. With a crossbow and an icycle and a thousand boxes of 'nilla wafers and teething biscuits. It would serve the man right for giving his oldest child a book on infant cognitive development and enrichment. 

Howard looked at Raj, who was rubbing the baby's back and looking as bewildered as he felt. Evidently the consensus between him and Priya had never been impassioned enough on any issue to warrant a united front against their parents. 

"Okay," he said, turning back to Jonah, "I get it. You think this is something that's up for debate."

Jonah nodded. "Actually no, considering our result was a majority vote. But if you're wanting to keep this in strictly sociopolitical terms: in a democratic system, citizens are entitled to petition their higher court of appeals for clemency when they feel they have been dealt an unfair punishment by a lower court. We've made our case and now it's up to you to make your decision."

The 'lower court' in this case being their 78-year-old *grandmother*. Howard shook his head, stopping when he felt a hand on his arm. 

"Well, if this is a democracy," Raj interjected. "I'm afraid we are going to have to ask for a recount."

At their brother's call, seven-year-old twins Asher and Anisa came running into the living room from the kitchen. Snooping behind the door already, Howard noted. Wonderful. At least they were a few years away from figuring out how his old surveillance equipment worked. 

"Howard, take Tav for a minute. Ash, I'm going to need four cloth napkins. Will you go get them for me, please? Thank you."

"What are you doing?" Howard whispered, cradling the baby's dozing head against his shoulder.

Raj leaned in to whisper against his ear. "Relax, I've got this one."

Asher returned, holding up four red cloth napkins. Raj gave each of the older children one, keeping one for himself. 

"Your father and I have heard your argument and we want you to know that we understand your feelings. But unfortunately, in this case, our family is not a democracy. It's a monarchy. Now, gather around and I'll show you how to hide the queen's turbriskefil in your napkin."


	2. The First Name Controversy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first argument Howard and Raj ever had about their son was over what to call him.

The first argument Howard and Raj ever had about their son was over what to call him.

After Penny's sonogram, after both the parents and the surrogate told the technician they didn't want to know the baby's sex (and Sheldon told them anyway). The five of them sat in Sheldon and Leonard's living room, eating take out while Howard pored over a book of Hebrew baby names. 

Raj didn't have a book. He'd already picked the name "Joel Howard."

Howard balked. "’Can't name a Jewish kid after a living relative -- just relatives who've passed on."

"What? Why not?" Raj looked up from the floor, a fork-full of Szechuan chicken stalled half-way to his mouth. 

"It's tradition."

"So is not eating that," Raj pointed to container the pork fried rice he was dipping into. "What's the difference?"

"The difference is if I eat this, the Angel of Death isn't going to come calling on any other Howard Joel Wolowitzes that don't."

"There are no other Howard Joel Wolowitzes."

"See? It's working."

Raj rolled his eyes. "How about just Joel for a first name?"

"Still technically my name."

"How about if the Angel of Death comes in and starts hovering over the baby's crib, I tell him where he can find *you*?"

Howard glared, still chewing. 

"You're going to raise the kid Jewish?" Penny asked, one hand stroking her belly. Leonard hovered near her elbow with a mug of hot chocolate molded into the shape of Spock's head.

"It's tradition," Raj said. "The children take their mother's faith."

\--

In the end, it was Penny who came up with the name Jonah, by way of suggesting the name ‘Thomas’: "Because your demon spawn is playing tommyknockers in my whale of a belly." 

Howard flipped through the book, eyes lighting up as his finger lit upon the correct page. 

Jonah meant “dove.” Meant “peace.” Meant survived getting eaten by a wrathful sea mammal and managed to not lose an arm or a leg to mastication. And since there were no living Jonah Wolowitzes that Howard could find on his family tree, it meant their first child had a first name (and, due to the sudden appearance of a third cousin called Stephen Jeffrey Wolowitz on said family tree, a hastily conceived but equally culturally significant middle name). 

"That kid is going to get beat up so often," Leonard said, smiling through the glass as the baby, wrapped in a blue blanket, slept on, oblivious to the onlookers. The nurse had misspelled his name --the tag on the front of his crib read 'Jonas Hawe-king.'

"So we'll teach him how to run. It's okay," Howard said. "Anyway, do you think with a name like that he's really going to stand out in Hebrew school?"


	3. The First Born Enigma

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jonah doesn't say very much and for Howard, who thought he was so good at translating, that's frustrating.

Jonah was their studious one -- and their obstinate one -- practically from out of the womb.

Jonah was an enigma to Howard and that bothered him. He was this little person with Raj's dark eyes and hair and Penny’s chin and, oddly enough, Howard’s allergies who looked familiar to him from a distance. The way he stood was familiar. The way he tucked his chin into his chest and tried to shrink inside his school uniform and pulled at his tie so his shirt collar could breathe was familiar. The way he couldn’t sit still long enough to talk to Raj’s parents on Skype, but would spend six consecutive hours completing a Lego Millennium Falcon or sit in the park and stare at the gum trees for even longer...

Okay that last part wasn't so familiar, but whatever. It was manageable. Somewhat. So, Jonah would look at the trees while Howard looked at schematics for the upgrades for the next Mars probe. It was very nearly the same thing. 

“I don’t know why you insist on comparing raising children to rocket science. The practical applications of the latter are ridiculously simple.” Sheldon was no help. As usual.

Raj was no help either and that was *not* usual. He sat next to Jonah on the sofa reading his own books, nudged him and smiled whenever Howard came home with bacon cheeseburgers and didn’t react when Jonah barely glanced up from his book to acknowledge him or make eye contact. 

“It’s just the way his mind works. Stop being paranoid, you’ll scare the other parents.”

Howard had a feeling they already scared the other parents -- with their colorful outfits, their child safety harness with the Yoda backpack and their small talk about how outer space was like a vast sea made of hydrogen and helium plasma and dark matter. It was probably a bit more than what the others at Temple Beth Sholom were used to. 

In his own defense, the inner-workings of an average five-year-old's mind probably bore little resemblance to Jonah's. The kid was reading at a sixth-grade level already and had moved on from the "Magic School Bus" and "Wayside Stories" he used to pester Howard to read him to books about flowers. 

*Flowers*, for god's sake. 

“It’s what he likes to do,” Raj said. “You should be encouraging him.”

“He should be playing with other kids. He should at least be trying to share with other kids,” Howard argued, remembering how his similar vein of small talk had gone over with kids when he was Jonah's age, but at least he'd tried. 

“Maybe he does and you just don’t see it.”

“I see him all the time. I’m always there.”

“Well, maybe you’re not paying enough attention."

It hurt, to hear Raj say that and to feel that cold familiar spot in the pit of his stomach spreading outward to his chest, arms and even the tips of his fingers. 

"YOR FATHA WAS LIKE THAT," Ma said over coffee one day, on one of the twice-weekly visits that had grown to three or four over the course of a few months as her hip started bothering her and it became harder for her to put weight on her feet each day. "HE NEVER KNEW WHAT TO DO OR HOW TO TAWK TA YOU. I'D TELL HIM IT'S NOT HARRRRD. YE JUST HAVE TA SHUT UP AND LISTEN ONCE IN A WHILE. IF HIS FATHA DOESN’T LISTEN TO HIM, HOW’S HE SUPPOSED TO GIVE OTHA PEOPLE A CHANCE?" 

He learned his lesson the hard way one afternoon when Raj was in a meeting at the university and Jonah stumbled in the door, red-faced and wheezing with an arm full of spanish bluebells, larkspur, golden rod and something Howard was pretty sure was foxglove, some of it still with roots clinging to large clumps of soil. 

One sneeze and his little boy’s treasure trove hit the floor, flowers scattering across the carpet for Yogi the Evil Yorkie to sniff at. Howard managed to shoo her away just as he reached Jonah, a chewable children's Benadryl in his hand.

“I was curious to see if they could be transplanted from outside to inside and still grow,” he said once he was on Howard’s lap, red and gold inhaler clutched in a tiny fist while the two of them watched "Iron Man." 

Howard stroked his dark curls with one hand, turning up the volume on the TV with the other. “Well, as good as it is to be curious, sweetheart, I think it’s safe to say they’d be better off outside.”

“Flowers are interesting from an engineering perspective, Daddy.”

A pair of dark brown eyes zeroed in on him. Those words were almost certainly coached – almost certainly by another owner of dark brown eyes – but the enthusiasm with which he said it, the interest and the longing to share... 

Howard smiled. “Are they? Tell me why.”


	4. Pre-Marital Sex, Step One: Ask a Question

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three years before they are married and five years before their first child is born, Raj asks Howard for a favor.

"Why?" He asked, wincing at the trace of petulance in his voice. 

"Because he's never been before."

"Stuart has been to Comic Con, Raj." Howard had seen the autographed pictures arranged according to size, frame material and aesthetic appeal of the celebrity (From Lucy Lawless to Nathan Fillion) on the wall behind the counter at the shop. Not to mention the fact that they'd attended the same panels more than once. 

"Not with us," his best friend retorted. 'Us,' of course, meaning Raj. Apart from Amy and Penny, Howard was pretty sure Stuart could have done without the rest of them. And gladly so if the tentative glances he was throwing their way was any indication.

"This is important to me. All right?" Raj's voice softened and he leaned down so they were eye to eye. "Can you understand that?"

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Bernadette watching them, pretending to be interested in the shelf of old Backpack Marvels. Her eyes were slightly wide and unblinking behind her glasses, with a twinkle of something like expectation, parenthetical lines of sympathy around the corners of her mouth (which had a new coat of lipstick). Raj had talked with her about it first. That was... unnatural, somehow. A spark of anger flared and died in his stomach, quickly snuffed out by Raj's voice -- which was lower now, with an edge of a plea.

"Please? If you say yes, Leonard and Sheldon will go along with it."

"No they won't."

"Leonard will. And if he rides and rooms with us, Sheldon won't argue."

The mini only sat two, which meant he'd already secured Bernie's permission for them to drive her car. Something else flared, a shade higher than his stomach this time. Howard sighed and felt his chest contract, like the walls of a demolished house. 

"Okay."

The smile that lit his best friend's face was effervesent, almost strobing.

"You do realize with four of us in a room, that means none of us are going to be getting any the whole weekend," he purred, almost himself. Maybe he could corner Bernie in an alcove somewhere, preferably in her Nurse Chapel outfit. 

"We'll work out a tie system for the door," Raj smiled, winking. Howard held his breath and thought he heard dust settling as a structural support collapsed somewhere in the background.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is one of four linked interludes, the titles of which mimic the steps of the scientific method. 
> 
> Yes, Bernadette, the microbiologist, is dressed as Christine Chapel, the biochemist and bio-researcher and, of course, Howard, being Howard, would prefer the outfit she wore BEFORE she became a medical doctor.


End file.
